Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

It can be a heartbreaking moment in the life of a veteran actor: the creeping realisation that they can no longer remember their lines quite as well as they used to.

But the steady march of old age will no longer be a barrier to Britain’s best-loved actors, as the National Theatre announces it is to stage a new play for stars who forget their words.

The theatre is to put on Lost Without Words, an improvised play starring actors in their 70s and 80s who will be let loose on stage without a script.

The announcement, part of the theatre’s 2017 season, comes after one of Britain’s best-loved actors, Sir Michael Gambon, disclosed he had been compelled to give up the theatre because he struggled to learn his lines, admitting: “It’s frightening”.

Rufus Norris, director of the National Theatre

National Theatre director Rufus Norris said the new play would star “well-loved and well-respected” actors treasured by theatre-goers, but would not confirm the final casting.

Announcing his season, he said: “A couple of years ago, the director of Improbable theatre passed an old actor whom he greatly admired on the street.

“He asked him why he hadn’t seen him performing on stage recently, and the actor replied simply that he could not be sure any longer of remembering his lines.

“Improbable [the theatre company] has a long history of improvised work, and so an idea was born.”

Olivia Colman will return to the theatre

He added the show would aim to answer the question of “what would happen of actors in their 70s and 80s, who had spent their lives bringing life and craft to writer’s words, got on stage without a script? What stories would unfold at the other end of life?”

The theatre currently draws only one per cent of its actors from the over 65 age group, with the average age of audiences reducing from 55 to 51 in recent years.

“We’re obsessing all the time about trying to get a younger audience,” said Norris.

"It would be great to have a show where it goes in the opposite direction. It would be brilliant to have a show where the average age is 85.”

Saying the play would consist of "structured improvisation", Norris added: "Some of the stuff I have seen so far has been moving and hilarious."

Dame Judi Dench has previously said she takes memory supplements

Speaking last year, Sir Michael said of live theatre: “It’s a horrible thing to admit but I can’t do it. It breaks my heart.”

In 2013, Dame Judi Dench disclosed she took supplements to help boost her memory, after finding it getting more difficult to recall lines.

Angela Lansbury and Richard Dreyfuss are among the older actors who have used earpieces on stage to help prompt lines, in 2014’s Blithe Spirit and 2009’s Complicit.

Elsewhere in the season, the National Theatre will welcome Olivia Colman back to the stage to star in Mosquitoes, a new play about two sisters and the Hadron Collider by Lucy Kirkwood.

Imelda Staunton is to star in Follies

Norris worked with Colman on the film production of London Road, and said he had been keen to “woo her” back to the National after

Imelda Staunton will star in Follies, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, while Nathan Lane, Andrew Garfield and Russell Tovey form the cast of Angels In America.

The theatre recently announced a "national listening project... a verbatim archive of conversations from across the UK" which took place in the days after the EU Referendum in June.

Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate

A performance based on the first round of material, created in collaboration with poet Carol Ann Duffy, will be entitled My Country: A Work In Progress.

Salomé, produced by Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington DC will have its European premiere, while Common, by DC Moore and directed by Jeremy Herrin, will tell the story of a theatre to the common land of England during the Industrial Revolution.

Ugly Lies the Bone, about a US soldier injured in Afghanistan,will join Nina Raine’s Consent and Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles in the Dorfman theatre.